Waste Radio

parker brown and phil griffin talk about their favorite songs and why they like 'em! this episode features radiohead and the watchhouse (formerly mandolin orange), respectively.

Join us this month as we discuss David Gates' novel, Jernigan, a dark tale of a man way too smart for his own good.

An overview of the book:

Reading Jernigan is like stepping into the mind of a middle-aged man fraught in a tunneling psychosis so abysmally dark, that even the most enthusiastic PTA members would start wishing the titular Jernigan would do more than entertain his self-destruction and snuff out his candles burning at both ends. The protagonist Jernigan fathers, drinks, lusts, maims, remembers, drinks, fucks, hates, forgets and drinks his days away, not so found about the past or the future or – really anything at all.

David Gates’ novel climbs into late Reagan era America and manhandles the reigns of the period, limning a mal de siècle vibe that adroitly fits accessible reading with the sort of lofty postmodern malaise you expect from the involuted phrasing of a Beckett or Burroughs. You’ll often get subtle nods to figures like Pound and Eliot, but the modernist canon is never a prerequisite for comprehension and serves as a bonus for discovering Jernigan’s attachment to the suffering that art invariably entails. Jernigan is a page-turner and while clocking in at 240 pages, the six-month timespan of the novel reads like the study of a polaroid or a lost and crackly VHS tape, the one where you see your dad as the barely contained manic-depressant, only kept from a nervous breakdown thanks to an interminable supply of 7-Elven beer and belts of Canadian whisky.

The zeitgeist is not too far from our own and the deluge of motifs ranging from prescription drugs, alcohol, guns, infidelity, xenophobia, sexual abuse, and consumerism frames the American Dream as a mere chimera, its obtainment only made possible through rose-colored glasses or a detested safe and stable upbringing that would only make you another asshole in Jernigan’s eyes. Much of the story plays into our fate as not just people, but as Americans, as consumers, as the sons and daughters of our father and the mothers or fathers of our children. Jernigan seems to be looking for a way out of the karmic cycle, but it’s hard to say how hard and if there’s something to be valorized in his pure nihilism and dissatisfaction with living in the Greatest Country in the World.

Whether you can’t manage to get out of bed due to a quotidian micro-existential crisis, or find yourself so deeply addicted to something that functionality is impossible without it, Jernigan will intone a dark message of empathy. For the arty, the depressed, or the bored, the narrative takes readers into the dark heart of a plasticized culture unwilling to speak what it feels and opens the scar tissue of wounds we sometimes forget in order to survive but need exposed in order to live. 

-Jordan Finn

This month we discussed the novel Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth, the account of a lecherous old man grappling with his past.

An overview of the book:

“Sabbath did not care to make people suffer beyond the point that he wanted them to suffer; he certainly didn’t want to make them suffer any more than made him happy.” At 64 years old, the Mickey Sabbath of Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater lusts for female flesh as if (and maybe it does) his life depends on it. The master puppeteer who once used his finger puppets as a dignified career is now riddled with the aches of osteoarthritis and finds old friends and a laundry list of lovers as his remaining fodder fora relentless and hilarious week of manipulation and shameless seduction.

A man with no credo, Sabbath finds his only purpose in life cheating on his wife with the voluptuous and equally prurient Drenka Balich, who at the novel’s beginning, succumbs unexpectedly from ovarian cancer leaving Sabbath with only memories of a sordid lifetime to parse. A man in bed with the days of youthful philandering in the merchant navy and ‘60s free love, Sabbath flees his unhappy New England home forNew York City and confronts the realization that at the end of the century nothing is left for him but a tête-à- tête with a haunted history of death and trauma.

Roth’s writing is that of a craftsmen, presenting characters and situations with a relaxed grace that embodies the loquacious confessions of a protagonist spilling his guts, but without even a paucity of contrition. He fleshes out Sabbath’s saga by providing rich flashbacks, initially overloading readers with a dense history of references to Sabbath’s terrible losses, but slowly unraveling who his disappeared Nikki is, how he lost his credibility with the off-off- Broadway crowd in the ‘70s, and why Drenka’s highway patrolmen of a son has it out for ol’ Mickey. The writing is informal but wise, tight but loose – like Mickey – the narrator delving into decades old anecdotes, ribald fantasies that are confused with reality, and a twenty-one- page footnote-cum- phone sex transcript. In other words, it’s an accessible yet serious novel and gets the blood flowing in all sorts of organs.

And yet, Sabbath isn’t merely a lecherous pervert nor a villain. Our anti-hero bears much more resemblance to a Falstaffian anti-hero, a doggedly resilient man who refuses to move on or grow up, a quality both redemptive and damning. The freedom he showcases is a guiltless one: a liberation driven by his guile, lust for life, and independence. And while his obdurate isolation may appear as a shortcoming, he understands that “it’s the best preparation I know of for death,” the central preoccupation of the novel. Touché Sabbath. We’ll see you in hell.

-Jordan Finn

also includes some announcements about dreyfest and about our waste radio music roundup! if you want us to play your DIY music on this feed send it over to [email protected]. for more info on dreyfest visit waste-division.org !!

find worst bois on yer podcast doohickey for more eps. and buy ur friends some gum!

worst bois is cruisin with a weekly series. look up their new channel by searching "worst bois" to hear the second & third ep! this is the description for their recent one:

"we are both getting good at oversharing and worse at broadcasting. lou seriously needs some gas meds"

that's all it says. search "worst bois" on yer podcast thing to hear more!

We talk about Ta-Nehisi Coates' book, a letter he wrote to his 15 year-old son about being black in America. You should read it too, probably. It's good.

Getting started with those most iconic of witches, the Sanderson sisters, The Witching Hour is discussing Hocus Pocus! Laura and Kendall question how magic works in the world, why we're shaming 16 year old virgins, and have a cackling good time as they figure out how to podcast!

Oregon witches Kendall and Laura are evaluating representations of witches in media. Movies, TV, and books are all fair game on this podcast! Join them as they compare magicks, fashion, and storytelling during The Witching Hour.

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it's a bro podcast with 2 REAL brothers. so yeah i feel like putting a content warning on this but its a bro cast with the name worst bois so what do you expect. we talk about the potus debate & the ufc fight and some other less manly stuff. it's decent for a first (second) pod. jack could do a little better but he's pretty good for a twerp.

also coop did this graphic too cuz i love his shit. hit him up on insta for commissions @coopermalin

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riddy arman and me talk sadness, songwriting, & the 4th of the july in this ep and i don't fuck it up too bad. we had fun! and riddy sings a pretty song of hers. she's great. also cooper hijacks the interview for a bit like halfway thru

@coopermalin on the graphic

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